Chadwick ASB elections trump that ‘other’ political prize

by
Amy Zhou - 2016-04-27

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﻿Months before the U.S. presidential election in November, Chadwick had its own ASB elections. On April 6, the freshmen, sophomores and juniors gathered into the Amphitheater to listen to the candidates deliver their speeches and vote for next year’s ASB members.

Upper School Dean of Students Lauren White announced the results a few hours later: Jeremy Kole as president, Nick Benson as vice president, Stacey Jung as social chair, and Ryan Emelle as treasurer.

Emelle, a current sophomore, has had a lot of experience on Student Council in the past. She was VP in the first year of Middle School, and continued with Student Council for three years in a row.

“I would say that as a student who has not been on Student Council yet at Chadwick, there are things that I want Student Council to do. So everything that I said in my speech are things that I would have wanted someone on Student Council to do already,” Emelle said.

Jung, also a sophomore this year, is the current sophomore social chair, and from watching Beth Scott do her work, Jung was doubtful at first if she really wanted to be ASB Social Chair.

“But I realized that I really love it and I really like to do it. I like to be on Student Council and I like to talk to the students, and I feel like it’s a good way to connect to everyone,” Jung said. “I really like being very energetic and very positive, which I think is the main job of Student Council: to be positive and bring a positive energy to the school. So I did that for the sophomore grade, and I felt like I was ready to step up and do the same thing I was doing except to a bigger extent, to the whole school instead of just the grade.”

Jung’s main goal is to unify the school.

“I feel like being in unity is a very important thing we should bring to Chadwick and that it’s not being emphasized enough,” Jung says. “I feel like the sense of unity is always lost through the middle and end of the year. I want it to be like homecoming every day.”

Benson, part of the Chadwick community since kindergarten, also has had many previous experiences in leadership roles. He was on student council many times in the Village School, is the manager for Doodle4Earth, one of the leaders of the Village School Peer Mentors, and is also on Athletic Council.

“Ever since I came here in kindergarten, I saw the presidents and I was like, Oh wow it would be really cool if I could lead the school one day!” Benson said. “And just growing up, going to this school, it strengthened my passion for wanting to lead this school at some point, so I knew that VP would be my chance to do that. So it’s a good opportunity and I took it.”

When asked what advice he would give to future candidates, Benson said, “I’d just say if you want to do it, do it. If you have an actual passion for it, and you actually want to bring change rather than just putting it on your resume, just for the title. Do it for the right reasons. If you really have the heart for it, people will recognize it and hopefully they’ll put you in the position.”

While there were three candidates for ASB President this year, Kole worked hard on creating a solid campaign, spending hours tuning and refining his speech before being selected.

“I know many people in this race were having friends post Instagram posts and stuff like that,” Kole said. “But I really tried to focus on myself rather than enlisting other people to advertise my campaign. I was more focused on myself advertising the campaign, and just really focusing on whatever my speech and my ideas were rather than what other people are going to say.”

What made Kole want to run for president, the highest student body figure and possibly the hardest job in ASB? “I just really want to make a difference in general on campus. I would say that was probably the main thing because Chadwick has really helped me find out more about myself and make new friends and great relationships, and I just wanted to be able to give back in some way. I think this is the best way for me to do so.”

Kole looks forward to be able to leave a lasting impact on the Chadwick community. He already has several plans and ideas, including changing the cafeteria system to be more like CI’s so that it can be more efficient and organized, implementing a student feedback form so that teachers can have a better idea of how to maximize the effectiveness in class, remodeling the Roessler bathrooms, and solving the parking issue by perhaps finding some land off campus to be used as a parking lot for the students.

When asked about what he was most excited about for next year as ASB President, Kole said: “I would say I’m most excited to be the person that everyone knows who you are, I guess. I’m excited to think of what my creative thing is going to be every Monday and Friday to capture people’s attention. And I’m just excited to make the school proud.”